Basics

Street Fighter IV Basics

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Ultra Combos

Ultra combos are very similar to the super combos you're likely familiar with. Throughout a fight, a meter fills up (in this case, the revenge meter) and when it's at least half full you can execute an ultra combo. Every character has an ultra combo (Gen has two) and generally they do lots of damage. That's the basic gist of ultras, but there's more to them than flashy animations.

Two things make ultra combos unique to Street Fighter IV. 1) You build the revenge meter needed for ultra combos by taking damage rather than dealing it. The more damage you take, the more your meter fills and the more full the revenge meter when you perform the ultra combo the more damage the attack will deal. 2) Ultra combos cannot cancel other attacks. This makes them markedly different from super combos, which can cancel normal and special attacks. Since ultra combos can't cancel other attacks, comboing into ultras usually takes some ingenuity.

Focus Attack

The Attack

By far Street Fighter IV's biggest addition to the classic Street Fighter formula is the Focus Attack, which every character can execute by pressing MP + MK. While each character's Focus has a unique look, range and damage rating, they all share the same general properties.

The most prominent property is the hyper armor effect, which lets you absorb one hit from the opponent without being interrupted from your Focus Attack. While absorbing the hit does not completely negate the damage from the hit (you take the damage, but it regenerates quickly as long as you don't get hit again), it does let you immediately follow with a counter hit.

Here's an example of its use: If an opponent jumps at you with an air attack, you can begin a Focus Attack to absorb that hit and then release the MP + MK input to instantly counter attack. If, alternatively, you blocked the attack, you would suffer a frame disadvantage because of block stun and would not be able to counter attack until block stun wore off.

There are three stages of the Focus Attack that change depending on how long you hold down the MP + MK input. If you quickly tap the input, you still get the brief hyper armor effect of the Focus Attack but the attack itself won't have any special properties (though it will crumple on counter hit). If you hold down MP + MK for a second, just until your character flashes, the Focus Attack will crumple the opponent, leaving them vulnerable to a follow-up attack. If you charge the Focus Attack entirely, holding down MP + MK until the attack automatically unloads, the strike becomes unblockable in addition to causing the crumble effect.

Canceling

But wait, there's more! The Focus Attack offers much more depth than a simple attack that may or may not be blockable. The ultimate quality of Focus Attacks is their cancelability. Yes, we made that word up.

There are two different cancels associated with Focus Attacks, the simplest being the dash cancel. While charging a Focus Attack, you can opt to cancel the attack by dashing either backward or forward (just double tap or ) before your character actually follows through with the strike.

This cancel has a couple of uses: 1) You can use is as a feint to play mind games with the opponent; 2) You can execute a Focus Attack to use its hyper armor property and then cancel it so that you don't actually have to follow through with the lengthy attack animation. The second use is especially effective against projectiles. Instead of blocking a fireball, you can start a Focus Attack to absorb the fireball and then dash cancel forward to immediately move closer to the opponent. This tactic is key for characters that don't have projectile attacks of their own and need to close the distance against fireball-tossing jerks.

You can also dash cancel a Focus Attack after it hits. By dash canceling after the hit connects, you can recover from the attack more quickly and more easily follow up with a combo on the crumpled opponent as he falls to the floor. To execute this dash cancel, simply double tap or any time after releasing the MP + MK input. As long as the Focus Attack actually connects with the opponent, your character will interrupt the usual lag animation after the Focus Attack with a dash for an immediate follow up.

Quick Tip

When should you dash cancel? This is easy to remember: always. Basically there is no reason not to dash cancel a Focus Attack, whether it's an early dash cancel to interrupt the Focus Attack or a late dash cancel to negate the recovery animation of the Focus.

Dash canceling isn't the only cancel related to Focus Attacks, though. Focus Attacks can themselves cancel just about any ground-based attack by simply inputting MP + MK in the middle of the ground attack animation, provided you've got some spare super meter (a Focus Attack cancel consumes half of a super gauge). As a quick and simple example, stand next to an opponent and tap HP and immediately follow with MP + MK. The Focus Attack will cancel the usual lag of the standing HP attack and go instantly into the Focus Attack. While this will make for some easy and simple combos, it's not especially useful and not worth the super meter it costs...until you combine the Focus Attack cancel with the dash cancel.

FADC - Focus Attack Dash Cancel<a name="fadc"></a>

Pardon us if this gets a bit complicated, but it's important to learn the most powerful new technique in Street Fighter IV, the Focus Attack dash cancel (FADC). Cancel a ground attack with a Focus Attack and then cancel that Focus Attack with a dash to essentially reset your standing and let you follow up with another attack. You can use the FADC to set up combos that wouldn't otherwise work because the moves that set up those combos have too much recovery time. The FADC cancels that recovery time to let you capitalize on the hit stun caused by the initial move.

Here's an example of the FADC at work: Ryu's Shoryuken attack ( + P ) knocks the opponent into the air and they drop lifelessly to the ground. But because Ryu's attack also sends him into the air, by the time he recovers from the Shoryuken he can't do anything to take advantage of the lifeless opponent. But, if you hit with the Shoryuken and cancel with the FADC, you can forego the recovery of the Shoryuken move and instantly follow with an attack, like Ryu's Metsu Hadoken ultra combo.